ND grad student wins SI blog's NCAA pool

Allegiance to eventual champion Florida pays off.

Allegiance to eventual champion Florida pays off.

April 11, 2006|JIM MEENAN Tribune Staff Writer

SOUTH BEND He won a national contest through Sports Illustrated, but Bradley White, a graduate student at the University of Notre Dame, will not become a rich man. At least not because of this contest. White won the SI.com Blog Pool for the men's NCAA basketball tournament run by SI writer Luke Winn. For his efforts, he received less than $100 in prizes, including CDs by various artists. "I thought it was really neat to win," said the Florida native who did indeed pick the Gators. "I got to pick the team I always rooted for to win the national championship and they win the national championship and I also win the pool." He did so by one point. His championship pick was worth 32 points in the SI pool, where first round wins were worth 1, and kept doubling with each successive round. "The only reason I won is I picked Florida to win and so few people did that," White said. He did pick a few first-round upsets correctly, but early wins by upstarts like Bradley and George Mason were not among them. None of it much mattered to White, though, compared with the big payoff that was unrelated to the contest. His Gators not only won the national title in Indianapolis at the RCA Dome, but due to a lifelong friendship with a Florida athletic administrator, he was able to get front row tickets in the student section to see it in person. "I grew up a Gator fan my whole life," said White, who grew up in Tampa, Fla. He also entered CBS Sportsline's contest, with similar picks, but because that contest had many more entrants, he did not win that one. White, a former college tennis player at Oberlin College in Ohio, is at Notre Dame seeking a Ph.D. in biology, studying research genetics of the mosquito that transmits malaria. He hopes to be a college professor one day.Staff writer Jim Meenan: jmeenan@sbtinfo.com (574) 235-6342